The Children's Books Of Diana Wynne Jones - The Time Of The Ghost Book Review

Buy Diana Wynne Jones Books On Amazon

If you really don’t know, then let be
the first to tell you that you’re missing out. Wynne Jones is one
of the foremost writers of fantastical children’s (and adults’)
fiction. If you ask me (and you should), then she is one of the
foremost such writers that the world has ever known! (And certainly
vast quantities superior to the likes of J.K. Rowling).

Children's Books and Writers

Just because she is primarily a writer
of children’s fiction is no reason you should turn your nose up,
either. (Not that most us would in any case, since the advent of the
all-conquering Harry Potter.) Her children’s books are sufficiently
complex and subtle that none of us grown-ups need be embarrassed to
be caught reading one of them on public transport.

Beyond Harry Potter: Diana Wynne Jones

So what’s the very best Diana Wynne
Jones book? I think that The Time Of The Ghost is right up there: if
not the best, then one of the best of her long and proud production
line of excellent quality children's books. Wynne Jones has been
writing for decades now: I first became a fan as a child, and I'm
saying no more than that it was several decades ago!

Diana on YouTube!

The Time of the Ghost

The Time Of The Ghost is set in a
boarding school: but this isn't your average jolly hockey sticks
Enid-Blyton style romp, complete with midnight feasts and end-of-term
netball tournaments. The principal characters are girls – a bevy of
sisters - but this is a boys' boarding school. The girls are the
daughters of the headmaster and his wife, a harried and overworked
couple who simply don't have time to pay overmuch attention to their
errant, anarchic offspring. Thus the girls are allowed licence to run
riot all over and around the school, which they do, especially during
holiday times.

But where does this lead? Neglected
children are apt to develop their own tribal structures and their own
myths. The hierarchy and role allocation amongst the girls – the
pretty one, the motherly one, the talented one etc. - becomes well
established. So does their prime myth and bonding ritual, centred
around a battered old rag doll called Monigan. Who is Monigan? Is she
just an old doll, a creation of cloth and stitching? Or is she a
primal pagan goddess, using that old doll as a token and symbol of
its existence, enabling its worship by this hippy-dippy raggle-taggle
crew of sisters? Is she dangerous?

The book takes place in two time
schemes: one is the past, where the sisters as children run riot
through the school and worship Monigan at will. The other is the
present: but a strange present, where one of them, now a ghost,
returns to the past and tries – while suffering a loss of memory –
to identify which sister she is. She knows at least, that the adult
relationships of the tribe have become difficult, and men have caused
dissent and anger between them – possibly men who were once boys
boarding at the school. But there is a looming sense of doom, also:
is a dark event threatening the sisters, and does Monigan have
something to do with it?

Honestly, this is one of the spookiest,
most unfathomable, most emotionally intense children's books – or,
more accurately, just books – that I've ever read. If you haven't
read it, then you're impoverished culturally. Go and get a copy now!

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